Jean-Eric Vergne's form from FP2 continued into qualifying for the Santiago ePrix with the Frenchman soaring to a sixth career pole in Chile for Techeetah.
Vergne's initial qualifying lap was performed in group two, where he set a best lap time of a 1:19.124, which secured him a position in a very competitive Super Pole showdown.
Fellow group two runner Sam Bird, reigning champion Lucas di Grassi, Renault e.dams' Sebastien Buemi, and Vergne's Techeetah team-mate, Andre Lotterer, made it through to the top-five shootout.
As the second runner in Super Pole, Vergne beat Buemi to provisional pole position with a 1:19.161 with three runners still do go.
Through crashes for both Bird and Lotterer, who had been fastest prior to Super Pole, in their final runs, and with di Grassi having a ten-place grid penalty, Vergne secured pole position and with it an additional three points to his championship campaign.
Buemi was Vergne's nearest challenger and was 0.194 seconds adrift which means that he starts alongside the Frenchman on the front row of the grid.
Di Grassi was third, but the Audi driver's penalty, however, promotes Lotterer up into third place while Bird will start in fourth.
With di Grassi's penalty taken into account, Nelson Piquet Jr. will start from fifth for Jaguar Racing alongside Alex Lynn who completes the third row of the grid in the second DS Virgin Car, with 0.147 seconds separating the pair.
NIO's Oliver Turvey will start from seventh followed by Nico Prost in eighth, and Jose Maria Lopez in ninth.
As one Audi drops outside of the top ten through a penalty, di Grassi's demotion promotes Daniel Abt into tenth after the German driver qualified in 11th after struggling in his group one qualifying session.
After looking strong in practice one and two, Mahindra Racing struggled in qualifying in Santiago to end the session in 14th and 15th, with Felix Rosenqvist getting the upper hand on Nick Heidfeld in his group two run.
Discussion about this post